Cursed or unlucky? Villagers must flee again, this time from a volcano

For more than 20 years, a mural has reminded a couple of hundred families here of their forced exile into Mexico after near extermination at the hands of the Guatemalan military during a bloody civil war. The colorful images painted by schoolchildren tell a story of tragedy, but also resilience and unity.

For years, the week of Oct. 15 was a time to celebrate renewal and community. Townspeople crowned a queen. They slaughtered their fattest hens. They danced toand marimba music. But this year there were no festivities, and the mural explains why. The last panel shows men and women tending coffee plants and children at play. But also prominent is the Volcano of Fire, belching black smoke into a blue sky.Children play inside a transitional shelter.

“We all felt so vulnerable,” Garcia Montejo recalled. “We tried to evacuate people, but some didn’t want to leave.... It was a difficult day.” The families signed an agreement with the government to officially break away from the community in exchange for small concrete tract homes in La Industria, a suburban neighborhood in Escuintla, a municipality about 45 miles southwest of Guatemala City.

“If we got that land, we’d have to start over like we did 20 years ago in Trinidad. We had no plumbing. No house,” Garcia Montejo said. “It’s too difficult to start over again. So we thank God for the opportunity to actually have our own house.” Gonzalez hails from a community of indigenous farmworkers, ethnic Mayas who speak Popti and Mam, who fled their homes in the western highlands during the civil war that roiled Guatemala in the 1980s. The volcano is their latest misfortune.North-facing landscape of the community of La Trinidad shows how it is surrounded by volcanic debris causeways, as well as volcanoes.

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